NATION DATELINES

Published 4:00 am, Monday, April 29, 1996

AH: Goetz says he'll file for bankruptcy New York Subway gunman Bernhard Goetz - slapped with a $43 million verdict for shooting a teenager - says he will file for bankruptcy to protect his assets.

Goetz will file an emergency federal bankruptcy petition Monday, which would delay any collection of his assets by at least several months - the time it would take for a court trustee to be appointed, said his lawyer Darnay Hoffman.

Last week's jury award came in the civil case filed by Darrell Cabey, one of four youths Goetz shot on a subway car in 1984 because he thought they wanted to mug him. Cabey, now 30, was left paralyzed and brain-damaged.

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Goetz, who was acquitted in 1987 of criminal charges in the shooting, also said he would not appeal the verdict. To do so, he said, would make New York "the laughingstock of the world."

"It's the perfect thing to follow the O.J. verdict," Goetz told the New York Post. "It's a dumb-and-dumber legal system that this country has now."

N.Y. tops L.A.

in sperm counts New York Contrary to earlier research of declining worldwide sperm counts, two new studies found sperm counts in several U.S. cities are up, with men in New York City inexplicably having the highest counts, the New York Times reported Monday.

In one of the studies, researchers analyzed sperm from 1,283 men who donated to sperm banks in New York City, Los Angeles and Roseville, Minn.

Between 1970 and 1994, researchers found "a slight but significant increase" in sperm counts, but no change in two other measures of fertility, said Dr. Harry Fisch of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

Fisch also found that New York City men had much higher sperm counts then men in the other two cities. They had an average of 131.5 million sperm per milliliter of semen. The Minnesota men had 100.8 million sperm per milliliter, while Los Angeles men had 72.7 million.

Scientists had no explanation for the differences between the cities.

Scientists said the studies, published in the May issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility, provide a much needed balance to previous alarming studies that men around the world are losing sperm.

Egyptian cleric's aide

jailed by INS New York The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service will seek to deport a top aide to jailed Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in hearings beginning Monday.

However, a lawyer for Nasser Mohammed Ahmed is arguing that if his client were sent back to Egypt he would be tortured and murdered.

Ahmed, an electrical engineer who lives in New York, was arrested Tuesday by INS agents after he entered a federal building to attend a scheduled conference with an immigration judge.

An immigration department spokesman said Ahmed was arrested "as a result of new information that has been brought to our attention." He would not elaborate on what the new information was.

Abdel-Rahman has been jailed for life for plotting to bomb New York City landmarks.&lt;